Trump Admin Calls On Walz To Resign Over Widening Fraud Scandal
President Trump’s education secretary has criticized Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over his handling of an expanding fraud scandal, calling for his resignation in a sharply worded letter that also raises concerns about alleged misconduct within the state’s higher education system.
“You have been Minnesota’s Governor since 2019,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote to Walz in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. “During that time, your careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country. As President Trump put it, you have turned Minnesota into a ‘fraudulent hub of money laundering activity.’”
McMahon ended her letter by imploring Walz to step down.
“Given your dereliction of the office entrusted to you by Minnesotans, I implore you to resign and make way for more capable leadership,” she wrote.
The letter focuses on Minnesota’s large-scale fraud scandal, which has drawn national scrutiny following allegations that nonprofits, including Feeding Our Future, misappropriated at least $1 billion in taxpayer funds during Walz’s tenure as governor. The education secretary also cited what the department described as widespread fraud within Minnesota’s higher education system.
Separately, the Department of Education announced last week that it had prevented more than $1 billion in fraudulent student aid during President Trump’s first year back in office, citing increased enforcement against suspected automated applications and so-called “ghost students” seeking federal loans.
One of the alleged schemes disproportionately affected Minnesota. According to Fox News Digital, Riverland Community College averaged more than 100 potentially fraudulent student aid applications per year.
McMahon said her department identified nearly 2,000 so-called “ghost students” linked to colleges and universities in Minnesota.
“We call these fraudsters ‘ghost students’ because they were not ID-verified and often did not live in the United States, or they simply did not exist,” McMahon wrote. “In Minnesota, 1,834 ghost students were found to have received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans. They collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of the money with the college, and pocketed the rest without attending the college at all.”
She said the department has since implemented stricter nationwide safeguards, including mandatory identity verification for certain first-time applicants, before turning her attention to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
McMahon wrote that Omar borrowed “tens of thousands” in student loans and “now does not think she should have to repay, despite her generous, taxpayer-funded salary.”
A conservative watchdog group last month called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to pursue garnishment of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional wages over her student loan debt, citing her $174,000 annual salary, Alpha News reported. In her letter, McMahon accused Omar of having “taken advantage” of federal taxpayers.
The letter also criticized Gov. Walz beyond education policy, alleging that his administration oversaw what federal officials described as widespread welfare fraud affecting multiple assistance programs, including housing aid, food assistance, small-business relief, and services for seniors and children with autism.
According to the letter, the fraud allowed perpetrators to enrich themselves while the governor “did absolutely nothing” to prevent it.
“Shame on you, Governor Walz, for allowing this to happen and for benefiting from it,” McMahon wrote. “Stop defrauding American taxpayers. No politician is above the law, and my department, alongside every other agency under the leadership of President Trump, will continue to ensure that you will not be able to dodge accountability for your actions.”
Last week, Walz announced the launch of a new statewide fraud prevention program and the hiring of a private forensic auditing firm.
“I take full responsibility for it,” Walz said. “I think, and I will acknowledge certainly to Minnesotans and to the press here, I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of communicating the hard work that’s being done.”
I FOUND A TODDLER BESIDE HER UNCONSCIOUS MOTHER - THEN I READ THE NOTE IN HER HAND
The rain on Highway 9 took the heat out of Marcus’s engine block before the metal could even cool down on its own.
It was two in the morning, the kind of wet, black night where the asphalt turns into a mirror reflecting nothing back except the yellow line split down the center. Marcus kept his hands firm on the handlebars of his ’98 Harley Electra Glide. The rumble between his knees was the only sound for ten miles in any direction, deep and steady, like a heavy iron pulse. His leather jacket was soaked through at the shoulders, heavy with rain that smelled of wet pine needles, exhaust, and cold dirt.
He wasn't riding toward anything. That was the point. When a man spends five years behind state walls and comes out to find the house he grew up in sold off for back taxes, he stops paying attention to street signs. He just rides until the gas light comes on, fills the tank with crumpled twenties earned from wrenching on diesel rigs, and rides until the road runs out of dry land.
Then the headlight beam caught the glint.
It wasn’t a deer’s eye or a reflector on a mail pole. It was a sharp, jagged flash of red plastic—a broken tail-light lens sitting in the middle of the northbound lane.
Marcus let off the throttle, the engine braking down to a low, rhythmic thrum. He swung the heavy bike toward the shoulder, his high beam cutting through the rain. Fifty yards down the embankment, where the steel guardrail ended near a concrete culvert, a silver sedan sat wedged sideways into the ditch. The front end was crumpled up like a crushed beer can, the hood buckled into a sharp V against a willow tree. Steam hissed off the radiator, mixing with the fog rising off the mud.
“Damn it,” Marcus muttered into his collar.
He pulled the Harley onto the gravel shoulder, clicked the kickstand down, and killed the ignition. Silence swallowed the road instantly, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the drip of rainwater off his helmet visor and the rhythmic tick-tick-tick of his cooling exhaust pipes.
He grabbed a heavy flashlight from his saddlebag, clicked it on, and slid down the muddy slope, his boots sinking two inches into the muck.
The driver’s side window was shattered into a spiderweb of safety glass, half caved inward. Marcus shone the beam inside.
A young woman sat slumped over the steering wheel. Her dark hair was wet, plastered across her forehead and cheek. A thin stream of blood had dried along her jawline, running down from a nasty gash near her temple. Her chest was rising and falling, but the breaths were shallow, rattling softly in her throat.
“Hey,” Marcus called out, pounding his fist against the rear door frame. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
She didn't move. Her fingers were still locked around the rim of the steering wheel, her knuckles white and stiff. Marcus reached through the broken glass, feeling for the pulse at her neck. It was there—racing, weak, but steady.
Then he heard the sound.
It wasn't a cry or a scream. It was a tiny, wet hitch of breath coming from the tall grass six feet behind the rear bumper.
Marcus spun the flashlight around, the white beam cutting across the weeds.
Sitting in the mud, half-shielded by the rear wheel well, was a child.
She couldn't have been more than two years old. She wore a bright pink quilted jacket covered in mud splatters, little yellow rubber boots, and had tufts of fine blond hair sticking up in the rain. She wasn't crying. Her eyes were impossibly wide, dark brown, and completely fixed on the flashlight beam. She sat perfectly still in the freezing mud, shivering so hard her teeth clicked together like small stones.
“Jesus,” Marcus breathed.
He dropped to his knees in the mud, bringing himself down to her level. He killed the bright center beam of the flashlight, aiming it at the ground so he wouldn't blind her.
“Hey there, little bit,” Marcus said. His voice was low, gravelly, unused to talking softly. It sounded like two river rocks grinding together. “You okay?”
The little girl didn't shrink back. She didn't move at all. She just stared at him through the rain, her small chest heaving inside the pink coat.
In her right hand, pressed tight against her stomach, she was clutching a piece of paper. It was torn from a yellow legal pad, folded into a tight, damp square, her tiny mud-stained fingers locked around it like a vise.
Marcus reached out slowly, keeping his big, calloused hands where she could see them. He smelled of tobacco, wet leather, and old motor oil, but the girl didn't pull away.
“Let me see that, kiddo,” Marcus said softly.
He gently touched her fingers. They were ice cold. He pried them back carefully, taking the wet yellow paper from her grip. She let it go without a sound, her eyes never leaving his face.
Marcus unpinned his leather jacket, pulled the girl out of the mud, and tucked her straight inside against his wool-lined vest. She was so light she felt like a bundle of wet clothes. The moment her face hit the warmth of his chest, she buried her nose into his flannel shirt and stayed dead silent.
Holding her tight with his left arm, Marcus unfolded the wet paper with his thumb and forefinger. The ink was smeared by raindrops, written in a frantic, slanted hand that dug deep into the paper.
The first line made his heart hit his ribs like a hammer.
To whoever finds my daughter.
Marcus squinted through the drizzle, holding the paper under the beam of his light.
Her name is Lily. She is two years old. My name is Clara Mitchell. If you are reading this, I am either dead or they have found us. I have no family left. No mother, no father, no one to call. There is no one to protect her. Please do not give her to the state. Please do not let Thomas find her. I am begging you, stranger, whoever you are—keep her safe. Take the bag in the trunk. Take everything inside it. Just keep my baby safe.
Marcus read the lines twice. The ink bled into the yellow paper as the rain fell over his wrist.
He looked down at his chest. Lily’s small head was tucked under his chin now, her body trembling against his heartbeat.
From up on the highway, the distant whine of an engine cut through the night.
Marcus froze. He didn't turn his flashlight toward the road. He stayed down in the dark of the ditch, listening.
A heavy black pickup truck crested the hill, moving slowly. It didn't have its high beams on. It drifted along the shoulder, its engine idling low and greasy. As it passed the spot where Marcus’s Harley was parked, the truck slowed almost to a crawl. A spotlight mounted near the driver’s side mirror swept over the gravel, flicked down into the ditch for a second, and then moved on.
The truck didn't stop. It accelerated into the dark, its red tail-lights disappearing around the bend toward the state line.
Marcus looked back at the smashed silver sedan, then down at the yellow paper in his fist, and finally at the little girl trembling inside his coat.
The quiet on the highway felt different now. It didn't feel empty anymore. It felt like a trap.
